Ariana Grande Has Been Dropping Hints About "God is a woman" Video for Months

This, at least, according to Ariana Grande, who dropped her new music video for her single of the same name on Friday afternoon. In it, Grande and a cohort of cool girls recreated Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Adam," which you'll remember from Art History 101 as a particularly memorable portion of the Sistine Chapel's frescoed ceiling.

In keeping with her anthem's theme, naturally, "God" is portrayed as a woman, whose finger gracefully reaches out to touch Ariana, who was filling in for Adam. Other memorable imagery from the video includes: Ariana straddling a globe; Ariana flexing in silhouette; Ariana sitting patiently while a bunch of white men literally hurl insults (i.e. "bitch" and "stupid") at her; some gophers.

Grande's VMAs-bait video was the third to be released from her forthcoming album, Sweetener (out Aug. 17), but it's certainly making more waves than the previously released "The Light Is Coming" and "No Tears Left to Cry". (It's also much, much steamier.) And it looks like Grande may have been dropping hints about it for months.

Way back in early May, before Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson were "a thing" and she was just the sweet, ponytailed singer with angelic vocals, the 25-year-old attended the Met Gala wearing a Vera Wang ball gown which was essentially a fabric replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. (On-theme for the Met Gala's Catholic Church-inspired evening.) Sneaky!

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And that's not all. Throughout the month of July, Grande has been dropping more hints about the song and it's imagery on Twitter, tweeting cryptic messages that turned out to be song lyrics.

The rest of the video is littered with cultural references, from Roman mythology to Madonna's infamous cone bra. (We're assuming that the nod to Madonna is a double entendre, a reference both to the queen of pop as well as the mother of Christ.) Madge's voice even makes a cameo in the video; around the 2:20 mark, a recording of Madonna reading the Bible verse Ezekiel 25:17—a line made even more infamous thanks to Samuel L. Jackson's monologue in Pulp Fiction—can be heard.